PlayStation President Struggles to See How the PS4’s First Eight Months Could Have Gone Any Better

July 15, 2014 Written by Jason Dunning

At least in the first six months of the PlayStation 4’s life-cycle (November 2013 – April 2014), the system smashed expectations and managed to sell seven million units worldwide. Extending that time-frame to encompass its first eight months on the market, Eurogamer spoke with Sony Computer Entertainment President Andrew House at the Develop conference last week, where he revealed, “I look back on it and I struggle to see how it could have gone any better from most perspectives.”

Asked specifically about the PS4 surpassing Sony’s internal estimates by two million at the end of the fiscal year, House added:

I look back on it and think we executed several things really well that I’m fairly proud of.

One was being consistent in our message, being focused on delivering for the game first and foremost, but not losing sight of the opportunity to turn a console into a broader entertainment device as well, which is important.

It’s going to sound counter intuitive but it’s important for gamers. If the consoles we make find relevance with multiple people in a household and multiple members of a family, those are all opportunities for other people to get into gaming. I see us as almost creating a springboard for that, and that’s what a platform business is all about.

Although the PS4 is “significantly ahead” of the PS2 at the same point in their lives, House says they’ll wait until after the holidays before truly knowing where the new system is going:

One of the things we benchmark ourselves against the PlayStation 2 to a greater degree and we’re happy to have been significantly ahead of that. But we need to see a full comparison of a full year of what the PS2 did including a holiday season, compared with a similar period for PS4. And then we’ll have a sense of where things are really going.